Maxine Waters to Tea Party: 'Go Straight to Hell'

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Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters offered a suggestion to California’s jobless saying they should take on the Tea Party, which she said could go “straight to hell,” apparently holding the conservative movement responsible for the rising unemployment rate.

“This is not a game for the weak,” Maxine Waters was quoted as saying by NBC Los Angeles. She said this during an interview after Saturday’s “Kitchen Table Summit” at Inglewood High School where she remarked that “the Tea Party can go straight to hell.”

“This is not for the intimidated, this means you have to stand up to the Tea Party,” the U.S. Representative for California’s 35th congressional district said during the interview. “We know that they’re going to resist. But let’s have that fight. Unless you struggle and fight, you don’t know whether you can win.”

The Democrat’s jibe came a day after California’s Employment Development Department released figures projecting the state’s jobless rate at 12 percent, the second-highest rate of unemployment in the country after Nevada. California employers offered 4,500 new jobs last month as compared to the revised 30,400 jobs in June.

“I’m not afraid of anybody,” Waters said addressing over 1,000 people at the summit that was meant to give the jobless an opportunity to vent out their frustrations over jobs. “This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned, the Tea Party can go straight to hell.”

Waters, who is touring the country with the Congressional Black Caucus this month, was apparently expressing disappointment with the Tea Party’s insistence on cutting the national debt by keeping taxes low and cutting most spending, including spending designed to help the unemployed, the Mediaite news website said.

However, it’s not the Tea Party alone that is being blamed for unemployment. In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland attacked President Barack Obama. “We are totally frustrated, and people need to know that the president feels their pain. Almost every African-American person I spoke to said he needs to fight, and fight harder,” he said.

It seems Waters is trying to balance the Obama bashing by Democrats with criticism of the Tea Party.

Last week, Waters charged that Obama ignored the black community during his Midwest bus tour. “We don’t know why on this trip that he’s in the United States now, he’s not in any black community,” she said at a similar forum in Detroit. “We want to give him every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable. We don’t know what the strategy is. We’re supportive of the president, but we getting tired, y’all, getting tired.”

In July, Democrat Rep. John Conyers from Michigan told members of the House Out of Poverty Caucus that Obama needed to address unemployment in the black community. “We want him to know from this day forward that we’ve had it. We want him to come out on our side not to watch and wait… We’re suffering,” he said.

On Friday, Waters called for an emulation of the Tea Party. “The Tea Party discovered something. That is if they organize, if they talk loud enough, if they threaten, if they register to vote and elect a few people, they can take over the Congress of the United States,” she said at a stop in Atlanta. “They called our bluff and we blinked. We should have made them walk the plank.”

As Waters tours for the rest of the month, she is expected to pop out on several cable news networks in the near future, Mediaite said.